Many days late and $4.25 a gallon short

It seems our benighted Commander-in-Chief has finally awakened to the fact that Americans are paying astronomical prices at the pump, and it’s time to do something about it. Of course, this clarion call for action comes about 30 years too late (remember when Jimmy Carter said the same thing during the last gas crisis?) and seems more than a bit ironic when you consider that only a few weeks ago he said this:

WASHINGTON (AP) — With gasoline topping $4 a gallon, President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to lift its long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, saying the United States needs to increase its energy production. Democrats quickly rejected the idea.

“There is no excuse for delay,” the president said in a statement in the Rose Garden. With the presidential election just months away, Bush made a pointed attack on Democrats, accusing them of obstructing his energy proposals and blaming them for high gasoline costs. His proposal echoed a call by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to open the Continental Shelf for exploration

“Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response,” Bush said.

Dubya also made a not-so-thinly veiled threat to Congress later in the speech:

“I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” Bush said. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions.”

Bush said that if congressional leaders head home for their July 4 recess without taking action, they will need to explain why “$4 a gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act. And Americans will rightly ask how high gas prices have to rise before the Democratic-controlled Congress will do something about it.”

This is just more Bushit. The fact is, we’ve had over 30 years now to free ourselves from the shackles of our dependence on foreign oil (especially Arab oil) and what have we done? Built bigger and less fuel-efficient cars when low gas prices lulled us into a false sense of security. Burned oil at unprecedented rates and failed to explore alternative energy options.

Folks, this present crisis is nothing more than the chickens coming home to roost. We’ve wasted the past 30 years and now there’s no way we can catch up, and nothing we do vis-a-vis domestic oil production will have the slightest effect.

For Bush to sit there and pretend it’s someone else’s fault is, to say the least, disingenuous. It’s as if he really thinks we don’t know his oil buddies in Texas and Saudi Arabia haven’t been reaping the rewards while the American people suffer.

Like everything else he’s done this year, in his last lame-duck year of this failed presidency, Bush’s belated reaction is too little, too late.

He’s a failure as a President, as a leader, as Commander-in-Chief, and as a human being. It’s time for him to sit down and shut up, and let better minds than his tackle the problems he doesn’t understand but nonetheless had a hand in creating.